…………………riverrun, off Yarra…
JG, near-blind octogenarian, lay resting on an earl’d bed of delirium (beads of sweat upon his brow), waging a penisolate war. The uisge beatha (ceftriaxone/H2CE3) was circulating/re-circulating through a 20-gauge cannula in his left cephalic vein, saline trickling in via an 18.
…….The catheter bag filled with a cloudy rosé-coloured urine. The falls mat, dormant by his bedside, blinked silently, ever-ready to transmit its beeping anachronistic nonsense all across the dalppled post-modern space of Eden’s Privates Hospital towards the nurses’ station.
…….The ceiling lights had been switched off, but the faint fluorescent glow of a bedside lamp had settled in the corner over a young blonde in scrubs whose badge read ‘Sam’, and beneath that, in a finer typeset, ‘Graduate Nurse’. She breathed long and weary sigh – the sedative had worked – and began leafing through the pages that the Nurse Educator had provided for her perural™ .
…….The JJ Stent (or Double J stent) was introduced by one R.P Finney in the late 20th century. Their formal introduction, in the year 1978, came some two hundred years after the first ureteric stents had been described during the ethereal open surgeries of the 1800s. The JJ stent, like any ureteric stent, passes from the left or right kidney right down into the bladder, maintaining the patency of the sickly and obstructed neo-classical ureter. Typically placed ureteroscopically in cases of infected renal calculi, these soft plastic tubes allow for piss to drain through the angry swollen passage, generously circumnavigating the dialectical progression that is : stone formation → obstruction → pyelonephritis → bacteraemia → septic shock → R.I.P. The JJ stent, by a gentle coiling at either end, is far less prone to slippage than previous models – thus, it is a testament to medical progress, and frankly, to modernity.
…….JG groaned, his hand reached searchingly towards the bedside table; he’d just had a wash and, Sam hoped, now ought to be feeling as clean as a whistle. She looked admiring upon one of the veins in his wrist – it looked so nice and springy – maybe she could cannulate it before the end of her shift? Then an angry mutter burst in from the doorway: the ever-watchful Nurse-In-Charge: sharpen his pillowscone!
…….Sam scowled, ready to reply – such a nice clean corpse did you ever see? – but thought better of it and forced a smile. Oh, she could be so bloody particular! Couldn’t it wait til thirstday morning? Sam rose from her stool and knelt over by his side. James… James… Are you ok? Are you in any pain? Do you want some endone?On a scale from zero to– he grimaced, his face contorted in a strange poetic way. Zurich! God! Who would want to die in Zurich?!
…….James, James, you’re not in Zurich, you’re not dying! You’re in a hospital, in Melbourne, on the Urology ward. You had a kidney stone, it got infected. They had to insert a stent. We’re giving you some antibiotics. You’re going to be fined again…
…….And she knelt down by his bedside and she whispered in his ear: hohohoho, Mister Finn, you’re going to be Mister Finnagain!James? James?! – oh, nevermind.
…….He had turned smiling alanglast the bed and was snoring softly.
…….…….…….…….…….…….…….…….…….…….…….…….…….…….…….…….…….миш миш миш …
…….He lay there in a sundowned slumber, malachus-wielding, sewing dreams. The corridors beeped and buzzed and whirred. Sam tiptoed across the room and picked up a large-print copy of Ulysses from his bedside. JJ stirred metempsychosis in his hi-lo, it’s Greek: from the Greek, that means the transmigration of souls. And then cried out in a panic: the kidney!!! Sam started with a fright, the book dropped down to the wet floor. His gaze locked onto hers with crazed unseeing eyes. Milly? Molly? Could it be you’re back already? I thought that you were getting photos taken up in Mullingar? No it’s Sam … yes, Sam … I’m your nurse for the night … they’ve assigned me as your one-to-one. Sam? Samuel?! I’ve been re-reading Dante and the Lobster! What a wonderful job you’ve done there! I’m not sure about the whole hospital story though… it seems a tad melodramatic – after all, it was only a kyst… And besides, I have another idea for the Wake! [nursing his cranic head] It’s all becoming clearer now: page 7, on the 9th line, we’ll go instead with: whase be his baken head?! Like Roger Bacon, do you follow?! Yes, James, I have to follow (you) … and please, you need to get some sleep. We won’t be having any wakes for you today.He proves by algebra that… Sam sighed again. It was going to be a long long night.
…….Sam rose slowly and moved back towards her chair. They had done everything by the book: had given him a commodius vicus, a hi-lo bed, a calendar, and we put on your clock again, sir, for you!, hung a fadograph of a yestern scene, charted the withdrawal scale, given him thiamine, re-oriented him whenever possible. He (erse solid man) was now becoming fallible – a ‘falls risk’ (bababadalgharagh, now clay feet swarded verdigrass where he last fellonem), thundrous boomin’ bellowsed, (i’ll trip your traps!), but the infection kept improving (seven days without a fever, whiteselves tumbling down down down), and the pain seemed largely under control. His siblings came and went, saying that he was, despite his present state, a great builder, a great cultivator, and appeared far less perplexed by his Joycean delirium than any of the staff. His mother (passencore rearrived) told the doctors that he had always been an odd cat, pentschanjeuchy, but a good boy nonetheless, and only a bit of a kantian when it came to that life-sucking sinkhole of a bookclub which he organised. He’s wasted his golden years! she’d cried: and for what?! Then she’d brightened, said something about him living another seventy-odd years, placed a gallon of whiskey at his feet, a barrel of porter at his head, and left. The night nurse, handing over, said it had all quite unsettled the poor young chap. But then he’d called her a scraggy isthmus right at the end! And she had no thyroid! Now, that was uncalled for! Everyone knew how technically complicated her thyroidectomy had been – 50mLs of estimated blood loss on the op report? What an absolute forgery! Isthmus?! Isthmus?!! I don’t have a bloody isthmus!!
…….The psychiatrists were visiting daily now, arriving in great droves with their registrars and interns and clinical nurse specialists and medical students, all jostling for prime position at the foot of the bed. They would leave pages and pages of notes, piling into the dark ammonia-stinking room with their copies of Ulysseses and Finnegan’s Wakeses. The interns, backs breaking from the sheer weight of the commentaries, had begun to arrive early in the morning with trollies and trollies of literary criticism, wrapped in polystyrene foam and covered with giant placards marked PRIVATE PROPERTY, DO NOT TOUCH. They would all stand there, in their smartest clothes, with their most serious faces, popping sheets of bubblewrap behind their backs. Only yesterday, one had been lambasted for not carrying a copy of the Talmud on her person. Doctor Faherty, the madison man, had appeared stupefied, next you will tell me there is no Mabinogion in that trolley either! The student trembled, averted his eyes, popped another bubble. At the end of their notes, they would messily scrawl: consistent with organic cause, treat infx, no further role for mental health input at this stage, re-refer as required. And yet they would return, day after day, and remain with him in deep psychoanalysis for hours at a time. Just last night, at three o’clock in the morning, a near-hysterical psychiatry trainee had called onto the ward, giving the sleepy in-charge quite the fright: is he awake? Is he awake? Can I speak to him?! I need to–
…….But the in-charge somber spake – behold of him as behemoth for he is noewhemoe. Finiche!
…….What, is he–?!
…….…….…….…….…….…….he was confessing! the pour craythur // like a camel thru the eye …
…….…….…….and then,
…….…….…….…….…….pftjschute
…….…….…….…….…….…….Wait!
…….…….…….…….…….…….…….…….…….…….…….…….…….Тише, мыши, кот на крыше!
…….peep! peep! peep!
…….…….…….…….…….…….…….…….…….Thanam o’n Dhoul! D’ye think I’m dead?
Michael (MRS K) is a writer living and working on unceded Wurundjeri country whose image-dense poetry fuses classical, romantic and modernist themes. He has a poetry collection, Juvenilia (2025), published by Vibe Union, and has an upcoming collection of prosimetrum and translations titled Monad’s Garden. He was the fortuitous winner of the Slamalamadingdong poetry slam in April last year, has appeared in a musical collaboration on Yaru’s Barefoot Metaphors series, and has been a featured poet with Thin Red Lines. You can find Michael on Wednesdays at Chaotic Musings working out some new material (and if you’re lucky enough, you might even catch him try to sing 😳).
2026 Bloomsday Supplement - Table of Contents
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